Under pressure from federal officials, Oregon Governor Kate Brown announced on Tuesday that she will allow all Oregon residents age 65 and older to be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccination starting January 23.
On his own initiative, Brown also said he would allow daycare workers, preschools and elementary and high schools to start receiving vaccines with the elderly.
Brown’s decision to expand vaccination for the elderly in Oregon was in response to the call by US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar earlier in the day for all states to start vaccinating Americans aged 65 and over and people with underlying diseases that put them at greater risk for COVID-19 complications. Azar said the federal government will no longer insure second doses of vaccines before sending them – and that would release more doses to vaccinate this new group of vulnerable Americans.
In a press release on Tuesday, Brown did not address his plans for Oregon residents with the underlying conditions, and the governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for clarification. But it appears that people with underlying diseases will not be prioritized immediately for vaccinations, since Brown did not mention them.
Brown said there is only one warning to distribute vaccines to the elderly and educators – that the federal government send more vaccines as promised. Charles Boyle, a spokesman for the governor’s office, said he did not know how many more vaccines would come to Oregon.
“While this is an unexpected change in the course of the federal government, receiving more vaccines is welcome news for states – and Oregon is ready to devote all the resources necessary to increase distribution with our health partners,” said Brown in a written statement.
Brown offered no specification on where Oregon residents who will soon be eligible can go to be vaccinated. State leaders are still working on a system to disseminate the information.
“If you are an Oregon resident who has just applied for a vaccination, I am asking for your patience,” continued Brown. “Please do not call your doctor’s or health care professional’s office with questions about when you can be vaccinated. Today’s news came without notice from the federal government. Oregon health care providers are working as quickly as humanly possible to change their vaccine distribution plans to meet this sudden change in national guidelines. “
It is unclear how many residents the new expanded guidelines will include. Currently, the state has allowed nearly 500,000 Oregon residents to be vaccinated as part of Phase 1a. This mainly covers health professionals and residents of long-term care facilities, but allows others, including prison and prison officials and veterinarians.
The governor did not say how many daycare, preschool, and elementary and high school employees are in the state. According to the US Census figures, there are about 767,000 people aged 65 and over in Oregon. At most, about 21,000 of them were already eligible as part of Phase 1a because they live in long-term care institutions.
Huge increases in the number of eligible vaccine recipients will put enormous pressure on an already overburdened vaccination system in the state. According to the state, 115,060 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines reached the residents’ arms, out of 321,425 doses that the CDC claims have been sent to Oregon so far. This means that about 36% of the available stock has been used – a significant improvement from the 25% that had been used about a week ago.
But vaccinations are going much slower than expected on December 16, when the first vaccines were injected into healthcare professionals. Oregon’s initial deployment was affected by ineffective planning, but state officials say reforms are underway.
In the last week, an average of 7,600 doses were administered each day. The governor set a target of 12,000 a day for the next week, but acknowledged that the pace would need to accelerate considerably in the coming weeks.
Patrick Allen, the director of the Oregon Health Authority, said there would be 12,000 daily injections per day, and it would take until 2022 to inoculate 70% of the state’s population – about 3 million people – with the two-dose vaccine regimen. Seventy percent is the minimum that some public health experts say is necessary to achieve collective immunity, which is the point at which the virus is seriously prevented from spreading easily through the community.
This is a developing story. Check back on OregonLive.com for updates.
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– Aimee Green; [email protected]; @o_aimee